Memoirs Keep Coming
by Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 5/19/2008
Publishers continue to snap up memoirs, undermining the perception that the genre is embattled in this post-Frey, post-Seltzer era. Gotham executive editor Lauren Marino preempted North American rights to a memoir straight from the pages of the New York Times' “Modern Love” column: Julie Klausner's tentatively titled I Don't Care About Your Band: Lessons I've Learned from Romantic Disappointments. Scott Mendel made the substantial sale. Derived from the author's April 27 column about her short-lived romance with a musician, the book will chronicle Klausner's years of searching for a relationship prospect as good as her own father, a career as successful as Bette Midler's and a world to live in as sane as the one in her own imagination. Tentative pub date is spring 2010.
Penguin Group imprints prevailed in two recent auctions conducted by agents at Artists and Artisans. First, Riverhead exec editor Jake Morrissey won world rights from Adam Chromy to David Ellis Dickerson's House of Cards, in which the crossword puzzle designer and frequent contributor to This American Life explains how writing greeting cards at Hallmark led the former evangelical Christian to lose his religion and virginity, while discovering just how many ways there are to say “Happy Valentine's Day.”
And Berkley exec editor Denise Silvestro won world rights from Jamie Brenner to Erica Rivera's Insatiable, in which the single mother recounts how she confronted her addiction to an eating disorder comprising starvation, bingeing and compulsive exercise. Rivera writes for the Minnesota Star Tribune. This and the Dickerson are scheduled for summer 2009.
Lindsay Orman at Three Rivers Press won an auction for an untitled memoir by Izzy Rose via Yfat Reiss Gendell at Foundry, who sold North American rights. Rose, an Emmy-winning television producer and creator of the blog Stepmother's Milk, will chronicle her journey from happy single life in San Francisco to an even happier one as a married Texan learning how to be a stepmother to her husband's two boys from a previous marriage. Tentative pub date is May 2009.
